Many feel we're nothing more than the thoughts and feelings that are prompted in our brain
by what's happening outside in our world.
But if you are mindful of those thoughts and feelings, and you choose to live a better
life; remember, you create your own world.
So if you choose to live in a better world, a utopian world, then you will be there.
It's all your choice.
Chopra: Well let's talk about what happens to our brain when we fall in love.
I think it's important to say that we fall in love, not the brain.
The brain carries out the physical expression of that love and from my understanding I know
that when you are feeling that feeling of love, you make oxytocin which is supposed
to be a bonding hormone.
The love hormone.
You make dopamine which is an antidepressant, serotonin which increases self-esteem, and
then opiates which give you that high feeling, the intoxication if you will of love.
So the intoxication of love has its own chemistry.
What I've also found out recently is that all these chemicals are immunomodulators.
They modulate the activity of the immune system because they are receptors to these.
So the brain in love?
Tanzi: Well I think we know that there are many neurochemical changes, very intense ones,
when one is falling in love.
Especially if they’re young and infatuated.
So the first question I think about is if I'm a young single guy, and there are two
women in front of me, and both are equally beautiful.
But one of them, I look at her, she's another woman.
But the other one, for some reason...
I don't know her, but love at first sight.
Who knows how many cues are coming from this beautiful woman versus that, that makes me
say I need to meet this person.
And now later she's gone.
And I keep thinking about her.
And I want to find this person again, meet them again.
Like they used to do, you put an ad in, I saw you on the train at 3:00.
What makes that happen?
Well what makes that happen are cues that involve the entire body.
Smell, sight, things we don't know about.
The brain allows you to react to the fact that you are somehow falling in love.
But it's your entire existence, it's all of your sensory systems.
Things are happening that cannot be readily explained that allow you to fall in love with
one person versus another.
Some would say it's just pheromones, which you can smell subtly but don't know you're
smelling.
But it's probably more than that.
Chopra: And there's memory involved perhaps that goes back to previous experiences that
influences the interaction right now, the charge right now.
Perhaps this woman reminds me of my mother or...
Tanzi: Sure.
Chopra: ...somebody that I loved before, etc.
So it's very complex but the brain definitely changes when you're in love in a healthy way,
right?
Tanzi: Yes.
As soon as your brain, for whatever reason you have now fallen in love, a memory of your
mom's face or new cues, either way, your brain is simply allowing you to register that and
express it, but that's not the same as saying that your brain has fallen in love.
Your brain is allowing you to experience it.
At that point you must ask, are you now completely a servant to this new neurochemistry that's
taking you over as you fall in love, or are you still in charge?
You being the real you, not just your brain.